Monday, April 28, 2014

Companies have both sales and marketing departments and
while they may overlap, they aren't the same thing. A sales executive explained
the difference to me this way.

"Sales is when a customer comes to you to buy a product
that they already know they need or want and you convince them to buy your
product to fill that need. Marketing is making them understand that they need
your product in the first place."
In other words, marketing creates the customers, the demand if you will,
and sales services those customers, i.e. satisfies that demand.

In the nonprofit world, when grantors open grants for
applications, that grantor already knows that they want to support a certain
type of philanthropy. They are essentially shopping for the program that best
fills that need, but initially they reach out to you, or at least to
organizations like yours. They are shopping and you are selling.

When you make the initial contact, you are marketing your
program and organization to persons or organizations that may not know the
problem you want to address even exists.

If you want to attract more or better support, you have to
market. You might call that public relations, community outreach, or donor
development, but it is still marketing. For some reason, many nonprofits just
don't think of traditional marketing strategies as applicable to them, maybe
because they don't understand the underlying strategy.

Like traditional customers, donors come and go. Long-term
funding partners may change focus, have a cash shortfall, or just go away. Having
a method of developing new donors is not just desirable, it is mission-critical.
Marketing provides that capability.

Donor development is more like marketing. People may only
know that they have some spare cash and may have a general idea that they want
to support a charitable organization. Your job is to develop a desire to use
that money for your mission.

In the nonprofit and philanthropic world, that means putting
together a package that tells them exactly why supporting you is a good use of
their funds, offer them personal satisfaction by telling them what they will
accomplish, and then deliver those outcomes. Sometimes you can do that through
mass media branding, and other times it has to be targeted to a specific person
or organization.

It also means doing a considerable amount of research to identify
the best person or firm to approach. If you are selling a car, you wouldn't
market to people that want to buy furniture. If you are youth-focused, then pursuing
a prospect focused on building preservation
won't work, even if they are right in your city and have stacks of cash.

Too many nonprofits are looking for the magic formula, the
words that get them money every time from every type of donor. They rely on
canned appeals that only work with certain established donor demographics and
wonder why they can never seem to add new supporters.

If that strategy worked, we'd still be buying the original
Apple computer kit from 1976, instead of the iPad®.

Nonprofit marketing is at its core about expanding your
customer (donor) base . That concept doesn't change, whether you are a
for-profit or a nonprofit. Whether you do it with events, a blog, social media,
direct mail or TV ads, your marketing
goal is still the same.

Marketing should
definitely be a part of your fund raising plan. If you don't quite understand
the theory or don't know how to put it into practice, email me and we can talk about achieving
your specific goals.

Monday, April 21, 2014

I look at a lot of nonprofit websites, Facebook pages and
other online communication mediums while working on messaging or developing a
grant narrative for clients. About half of them have a blog. After reading
them, I sometimes wonder if they truly understand their audience, or the
purpose of the blog

.

Business-related blogs today are not about posting a note
about an up-coming event or a notice of a sale. There are too many short-form
ways to communicate to use a blog for that reason.

Blogs today are a way to provide a way to keep customers or
in the case of nonprofits, donors and supporters, interested in supporting your
organization and recruit new supporters.

To do that you need to provide something that takes more
than three seconds to read, and while there is an SEO (search engine
optimization) element, good blogs are
more than that.

Savvy for-profit businesses know that a good blog engages,
educates and informs as well as selling something. The blog should integrate
with another facet of the business.

For instance, a business selling safety equipment for homes might
link to their blog from their product description page like this:

"Item Description: Home fire alarm. Do you know how long you have to escape a
residential fire? Check out our blog(link here) to see how long
you can safely stay in your house when a fire starts."

The blog post then goes into detail about how long you can
safely stay in a burning room, why and how to escape and offers a link back
to the product ordering page.

The blog post does two things. First it provides factual information
that makes the purchase of the item they are selling seem imperative. Second, it keeps the business name connected
to the customer in a very personal way.

Nonprofit blogs usually don't seem to be written for the
right reasons or the right audience.

I recently checked out a nonprofit blog for an organization
that provides a type of monetary assistance for medical needs. The last few
posts were all about how this or that legislation affected this organization,
and it contained a lot of industry jargon and acronyms that only a health
care-savvy insider would understand. Yet, on their SM page they were
complaining that they were having trouble getting their message out. Other than
the URL, the nonprofit name, mission and
program title wasn't mentioned in the blog.

The audience I would think they would be interested in is
one that can use their help or support their mission, but they seemed to be
writing to effect some sort of political change at best, or just complaining
to the world in general at worst.

Perhaps a more useful approach would be to engage donors by
explaining how their support could provide X dollars for Y medicines or medical
devices. Or, they could engage their
potential beneficiaries by offering information on support groups that they
work with to reduce medical costs, or show how much their help had increased
access to care or equipment. Even better, they could have done the occasional
in-depth feature post about a person they had helped.

The point is, there was no reason for someone to engage with
them vs.some other nonprofit.

If I was a donor looking for background on them, I might
worry that my contribution would be used to lobby for something, or that the
organization was about to go under because of the legislative pitfalls they
described. That's not a good message to send.

Good blogs bring good results. Think about what outcome you
want your blog to have, and write it for the right audience. Don't assume that
they know all about you. Offer them some reason to remember you, and to
connect with you regularly.

Don't be afraid to
have some length to the posting if the topic warrants it. Most of the blog
posts I write for clients are from 350 to 800 words. If you'd like a free review of your blog, send
me an email. Let's make your blog a truly effective
outreach medium.

Monday, April 14, 2014

The word entrepreneur conjures up a vision of a person who
plans to start and run a for-profit business. Actually, the definition in
Webster’s is “one who organizes, manages and assumes the risk of a business or enterprise”. (italics added)

The skills and vision needed to start and manage a
successful nonprofit are not very different from those needed to start any
business.

You need a goal (mission and vision), a market niche (statement
of need), product or service (program), a business plan (strategic plan) and investors (donors) for you to stay around long enough to succeed.

So why is it that most fledgling nonprofits can’t accept the
idea that they have to have good planning and sound structure to succeed? Why
do they approach donors with a vision but no way to make it happen?

There seems to be a sort of “build it and they( the donors) will
come” mentality among nonprofit start-ups. Sometimes that works in business…the
first personal computer was conceived of and
built long before the investors arrived. More often though, new
nonprofits are more like some of the ill-conceived niche carmakers. The
DeLorean was a good marketing concept
but it was a lousy car mechanically, and it didn’t capture the market share
needed to survive.

Taking your nonprofit from concept to functioning entity
requires so much more than just a passion to help someone or something.

Chickens don’t come out of the egg fully feathered and ready
to lay eggs, small businesses don’t begin as multi-million dollar corporations
and nonprofits don’t attract millions in donations in the first few years, if
ever.

In “Climbing the Ladder to Nonprofit Success” I try to
prepare new nonprofits for the realities of becoming the next successful local, national or global nonprofit. I get a lot of
nice feedback from people, but I also get a lot of “you don’t understand the
mentality of a nonprofit founder”.

Oh yes, Virginia, I do. That’s why I wrote the darn thing. Every
person that strikes out on their own has a dream, but not all of them realize
it. The difference is that at some point,
the successful ones learn to borrow from or assimilate existing
knowledge to succeed.

There is a “reality” show on TV about prospective small
businesses competing to win backing from a group of investors. Yeah, it’s dramatized, but in many ways it is
very much like the donor development environment. There has to be value in it
for both sides.

For instance, both donors and investors (including social
impact investors) look hard at your
team. For nonprofits, that’s your board, your CEO, your CFO, and your program
administrators. Let’s face it, there are tens of thousands of nonprofits all
targeting exactly the same problems. Donors are going to pick the organization
with the best chance to have an impact and the quality of the team is what
determines that, not how much money you have.

Telling or showing donors
that you are the only working and involved member of the team is the
kiss of death for your grant application or donor recruitment.

Donors want to know that you have a solid path to success. They
want to be a part of that success, but they don’t want to own your nonprofit. On
your side, you need to be able to use donations to build your organization’s
impact, not just keep the lights on.

Thinking like an entrepreneur isn’t counter-intuitive to
achieving mission success. The skills needed to succeed can be learned and
developed. Marketing, publicity, planning, results reporting, program design
and financial controls translate very well from the for-profit to the nonprofit
world.

Want your new nonprofit to succeed? Start thinking like an entrepreneur.

Need more information on planning to succeed? Drop me a line
at granthelp@ida.net. Let’s talk!

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Are you targeting your entire fundraising budget to the
internet? Do you think that if it isn’t
online, it’s just too much trouble? Is
FaceBook your outreach program? Does the idea of interacting face-to-face scare
the living daylights out of you?

This isn’t a rant against technology. It is a rant against
boxing yourself into just one fundraising strategy.

Ten or fifteen years ago, everyone was struggling with
how to integrate the internet into their fundraising. Now it is often the only
fundraising strategy that new nonprofits consider.

I am one of the biggest boosters of an effective internet
presence. I probably derive 80% of my business from contacts that originate on the internet. I constantly maintain that having a professional looking, grammatically
correct, cohesive and informative website isn’t optional in today’s world. A social
media presence is just expected. Online donations may only generate about 7% of
nonprofit revenue, but that’s 7% you might not have without online donation
capability

.

What seems to be missing now is that once you engage a
nonprofit online, there is often no personal follow-through capability. I see
more and more nonprofits that don’t provide any contact data beyond an email
pop-up, even on their website.

There are real people behind those SM posts. They may
want to shake your hand or visit your offices, if for no other reason than to
prove that you actually exist and confirm that their money is actually being
used for the public good.

With all the media coverage highlighting how unsafe your
data really is in the cloud, many people are becoming street smart about how
easy it is to set up a scam online. If the only place they can find you is
online, they may shy away from committing to more than a minimum donation.

It is all too easy in our electronically defined world to
lose that sense of real engagement. However close you might feel to your online
group, when push becomes shove, how many of them could you actually reach out
and physically touch? One out of 1,000? One
out of 10,000? None?

Nonprofits are all about people. They are about people
that cry real tears, bleed real blood and have real lives. Don’t lose the human
aspect of your mission. If you are uncomfortable with or can’t arrange face-to-face
meetings, at least consider video chats and conferences that allow for personal
interaction. Have a phone number and a real mailing address available. If your
charity is still in the spare bedroom, think about having an informal
get-together at a local restaurant or coffee shop. Put a real face and voice in
front of your message.

The internet can be a wonderful meet-and-greet tool, but
it’s just a tool. Don’t let it become a surrogate or stand-in for real donor
engagement. You can hire a developer for your online world, but you need to be
the one developing your donor connections.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

One of the most frustrating parts of being a newer
organization or trying to grow a new program is the requirement that you
provide a prospective funder with results. It's especially hard when the grant
application is an online form that gives you a limited amount of space to
explain your results or projections.

That was the case for "Mary", who called me
yesterday about reviewing her grant application to a major foundation. She was
trying to raise money for a new program, and had been rejected at least four times. Saying she was frustrated
could be the understatement of the year. Her comments were along the line of
"How can I produce results if I can't get the funds to even begin?"

For Mary and all the rest of you out there spinning your
wheels, maybe these tips will help you with your fundraising

1. Have reasonable
expectations. You are probably not going to find one source that will fund your
whole program. Separate your program into specific sections that can be
presented as individual opportunities for grantors to help, and ask for funds to
support them in that order. This can also create an opportunity for the grantor
to continue to support your program year-over-year.

2. Develop reasonable
goals that are commensurate with your capabilities and be able to condense them
into a short sentence or two. If it is a
new program, forecast your expected results clearly by setting milestones. This
also makes it easier to provide or forecast results.

3. Research the
grantors. This means searching for organizations that specialize in capacity
building or seed money that have a history of funding new programs and who are
aligned with your mission and geographic area.

4. Be objective. One
question I often ask is, what you would do if the roles were reversed? Read your application as though you are the
one furnishing the money. Would you invest in your program? How is your
organization different from all the others pursuing the same funding?

5. Understand the
difference between funding a program and supporting an organization's basic
infrastructure. If you need general support, look for grantors that have shown
an interest in providing that type of funding.

6. Grantors are often
looking for a long-term result or benefit, so be prepared to illustrate more
than the immediate needs in your program. For instance if you are opening a
food pantry, the immediate short-term goal is to provide food. Can you show how will this impact the recipients in the
long term?

Your job as a grant applicant to prove that investing in your program is a wise
use of the finite amount of grant money available.

In Mary's case she was approaching the wrong grantors and
expecting funding for goals that would take at least five years to attain. By
targeting her appeals to a different type of supporter, and breaking her
request down into phases, I think she will have better success.

Want someone to look over your grant language? Email me
and let's look at it together!